Friday, February 17, 2012

Just today I got an email that under guarantee would lead to a damaged computer if I would follow the link. I want to show a detail that way too few of my customers are aware of.

From the "name" of the sender that I have never heard of to the contents of the text everything just screams "SCAM, BEWARE, CAUTION". But who does not like the idea to get $50,000, somehow. If you would have any hope that it might just eventually be true here is the final giveaway.

Look closely at the picture, a screen shot of the very small window of the email program. When I took the screen shot the cursor was on the link "File-For-Grants, you can see the cursor arrow. And in the status bar you can see the translation of File-For-Grants, that is where your browser really would take you to when you click on that link..

Reading it from left to right:

Go to "transfer.go.com"

Then go to "log.go.com"

Then finally go to "http://ow.ly/976nw?u6i7"

The first two steps are just disguising what really is going on. Likely every screen that flickers by really fast shows a few advertisements and thus makes money for the crook. In the end effect we end up at "http://ow.ly/976nw?u6i7".

Ow.ly is a legitimate service to shorten URLs. Shortened URLs are often used to avoid very long URLs - and they are being used to disguise the real target of the URL.

Expanding the short URL "http://ow.ly/976nw?u6i7" gets me finally to "http://www.stimulusgrantapproval.com/", a web site that WOT immediately flags as dangerous and unreliable.

As much as we all would like $50,000, it sounds too good to be true - and you know what that is in reality.

Just a little bit of attention to the details can save us lots of headaches. But we have to pay attention to the details!

You don't see the status bar? Some incompetent dimwit must have turned it off, it does not "go away" by itself! In Thunderbird you turn it on in View, Toolbars, Status Bar.

Stay safe.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in
the blog. Thank you in advance.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Computers and everything around them change at quite a
rapid pace. Especially the Internet is ever changing and with it the threats
are changing that we encounter. The crooks that want to use our computers to
their own advantage are adapting faster to changes in computer technology and
on the Internet than most users even become aware of the changed environment.

The changes in Operating systems from Windows XP to Windows
7 are so significant that some common viruses from 2002 through 2006 just could
not survive in a Windows 7 environment. Naturally the crooks are very aware of
that and they have adapted their software and their ways to get malicious
programs running on your computer.

Although it would still get your computer infected nowadays
you don’t have to go to “iffy” web sites anymore; you don’t need to download
illegally copied music, movies or license keys for expensive games. Your
computer can get badly infected without
you even going to a danger zone.

Today one of the major avenues chosen by crooks are
advertisements. One simple remedy is to follow this rule:

Do NOT click on or in any advertisement.

Especially if the ad promises a “free gift” or claims you
have been chosen as a “winner”. Trust me: Nobody gives an Apple iPad 2 or a
modern smartphone away for free!

If you think that web sites or services you use daily like
Google, web based email (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo mail, MSN mail and the like) or
even Facebook ought to be “safe” then you better think again.

For example so called product recommendations that seem to
come from a Facebook friend most likely are infected advertisements; they will
nail your computer with malicious software.

Sometimes that malicious stuff is
so nasty that we would have to rebuild the whole system from scratch – which
means you’d lose everything
currently stored on your computer’s disk drive.

The art of writing malicious software is not as much
technical skill to write a self-replicating virus program anymore as it has
become the art of social engineering. By
now you can buy “proven to work” virus code from the Internet, you just have to
do the social engineering to get the victim to click or to watch the
advertisement or to play that seemingly innocuous little video.Some examples of social engineering tricks are:

Making a supposed headline sufficiently
salacious to entice you to “click to read more”.

Promising a “win” in some unnamed lottery.

Promising coveted gadgets; currently an Apple
iPad, Apple iPhone 4S or an Android smartphone do the trick.

Promising something about “wardrobe
malfunctions” or the like; sex sells, you know?

Claiming a package could not be delivered and
promising to show you the order or even the invoice for the contents of the
package.

Plenty of other tricks, too many to list here.

What happens when you inadvertently click on the
wrong link or ad? Most likely your computer gets infected with a program from a
wide selection of nasty pieces of malware. Some examples are:

Trojan
Horse programs sitting secretly on your computer and enabling their creators
to use your computer for their purposes.

Scareware
programs that claim to have detected dozens of viruses; if you fall for the
scare- you will be directly out of some money,- you will have given your credit card information
to some crook or- you most likely will have “bought” a program that
will be really bad and hard to remove.

Key
Loggers that will record all your keystrokes, all login names, all
passwords, all account numbers and so on.

Bots (short
for Robots), hidden programs that can do and be used for absolutely anything illegal or criminal. Bot
activity has brought the FBI to quite a few houses of unsuspecting people.

About Me

52 years in Information Technology and 34 years of experience with PCs as of 2016. Specialized in non-destructive virus and malware removal, home computer protection and showing my customers how to keep their computers "mean and clean". From 2004 to 2015 I was the regular computer guru on a local radio call-in talk show. From April 2015 through April 2016 I was bi-wwekly on WBKV 1470AM. I offer only house calls and work exclusively on MS-Windows. I do NOT sell hardware or software, I sell only my know how, my experience and my time.